"How—whither is he going?" asked his wife, in a tone of interest.
Montresor replied, "The ill state of Lady Sara's health requires a milder air, and poor Ross means to take her without loss of time to Italy. I met him this morning, in despair about the suddenness of some alarming symptoms."
Thaddeus too well divined that this increased indisposition owed its rise to his recent return to town, and inwardly petitioning Heaven that absence and her husband's devoted tenderness might complete her cure, he could not repress a sigh, wrung from his respectful pity towards her, in this deep bosom-struggle with herself.
No one present except the future partner of his own heart marked the transient melancholy which passed over his countenance. She, who had suspected the unhappy Lady Sara's attachment, loved Thaddeus, if possible, still dearer for the compassion he bestowed on the meek penitence of the unhappy victim of a passion often as inscrutable as destructive.
When the party descended to dinner, Miss Dorothy, who sat next to the Count Sobieski, rallied him upon the utter desertion of one of his most pertinacious allies or adversaries—she did not know which to call the fair delinquent. "For admiring or detesting seemed quite the same to some ladies, so they did but show their power of mischief over any poor mortal man they found in their way!"
This strange attack, though uttered in perfect good humor by the lively old lady, following so closely the information relative to Lady Sara Ross, summoned a fervid color into the count's face; he looked surprised, and rather confused, at the revered speaker, who soon gayly related what she had been told that morning by her milliner, of "Miss Euphemia Dundas being on the point of marriage with a young Scotch nobleman in Berwickshire; and in proof, her elegant informant, Madame de Maradon, was making the bridal trousseau."
"So much the better for all straight-going people, ma chere tante" cried Pembroke; "little Phemy was no contemptible assailant either way. Besides," added he, turning airily to his own gentle bride, "you, my young lady, may congratulate yourself on the same good hope. I hear that an old turf-comrade of mine is going to take her loving sister off my hands. Come, Lord Berrington, you must verify my report, for I learned it from you."
His lordship smiled, and answered in the affirmative, adding that a friend of his in Lincolnshire, had written to him as most amusing news, "That the most worthy Orson, heir of all the lands, tenements, stables, and kennels of the doughty Sir Helerand Shafto, of that ilk, and twenty ilks besides north of the Humber, had been discovered by the wonderful occult penetration possessed by the exceedingly blue sorceress-lady Miss Diana Dundas (of as many ilks north of the Tweed), to be no Orson at all; but her very veritable Valentine, to whom she was now preparing to give her fair and golden-garnished hand in the course of the forthcoming month; that is, when the season of hunting and shooting is past and gone, and the chase-wearied pair may turn themselves, with their blown horses and hounds, to a little wholesome rustication in their homestead fields."
"I would not be their companion for Nebuchadnezzar's crown!" reiterated Pembroke, laughing.
Sobieski, not suppressing the smile that played on his lips at the whimsical description given by Lord Berrington's correspondent, wished the nuptials happy, as far as the parties could comprehend the feeling. The viscount in return protested that their Polish friend "was more generous than just in such a benediction."